Gail and Matthew Hancock

About 8 a.m. on Tuesdays, Gail and Matthew Hancock arrive at the Sacramento Food Bank’s North Sacramento warehouse to secure the fresh produce and other essentials that will replenish the pantry of Wellspring Women’s Center for the week.

“Fruit, lettuce, onions and potatoes,” reads a text message to Matthew from Dana Cash, Wellspring’s hospitality manager, conveying more items for her shopping list.

Before Gail and Matthew volunteered for this important task, “Dana had to do it,” Matthew said. “We’re doing this to help her so she can be on-site.”

Matthew says the most interesting item they ever picked up from the Food Bank is buttered popcorn-flavored jelly beans – an unlikely item for Wellspring’s menu.

The act was a kind gesture for a close friend in her 90s, in a hospice facility, unable to eat because of advanced intestinal cancer. 

During a visit, Matthew and Gail learned that what she missed eating the most. 

Is buttered popcorn — the movie theater variety.
Matthew said they went searching for like-flavored jelly beans with the hope that she would be able to suck on the candy without eating it and savor the flavor of buttered popcorn. Though they were unable to find the jellybeans at a supermarket, they discovered the elusive candy during their Tuesday trip to the Food Bank. 

 The jellybeans were a big hit with their friend.

“To see her face light up!” Matthew said. “It was too much serendipity.” 

By the time Gail and Matthew return to Wellspring with the provisions, women and children are already dining on salads, fruit, toast, cereal and a main course for the day, which varies from savory soups to frittatas and much more. 

After Food Bank duty, Gail serves as a greeter, holding the door for the women and kids just arriving. She is warm and engaging, welcoming both familiar and new guests with an ever-ready smile.

Door duty also is a natural extension of Gail’s childhood as a member of a military family subject to periodic moves both stateside and abroad.

“I would always make a new friend – and that’s why I love it here,” she says.

“Hospitality and love – I feel it everywhere,” she adds. “I love the philosophy of loving and the personalities. Everyone’s so vibrant.”

Matthew, who is an outgoing presence at Wellspring and a natural storyteller, joined Gail as a Wellspring volunteer several years ago, after a career selling tires for vehicles from big rigs to earth movers.

He is a versatile volunteer – working the serving line and doing kitchen prep. He even saw spot duty troubleshooting a trike used by Mercy Pedalers to deliver hot coffee and other comforts to the community’s unhoused. The three-wheelers are docked at Wellspring’s rear patio.

Longtime Tuesday volunteer Dick Maw says Gail and Matthew are “two really good people – the kind who think not of themselves but of those around them.”

“I don’t want to be the conductor, I just want to be a member of the choir,” Matthew says about his approach to helping out at Wellspring. 

Gail and Matthew are in their 40^th year of marriage, the parents of two adult children – a daughter who lives with her family in Bonn, Germany, and a son who works for a start-up company in San Francisco.

Fair Oaks residents, they enjoy an active retirement life that features travel, bicycling, walking, kayaking, swimming – and, of course, Wellspring. The two veteran volunteers praise Executive Director Genelle Smith for establishing “a new dimension” at Wellspring – a phenomenon Matthew refers to as “social work in disguise.”
“You can walk through the door and expect to be fed,” he says, “and, without knowing it, this place is the solution.”